Hugh Cook - The Wishstone and the Wonderworkers

To rescue her first from the demon Binchinminfin and then, doubtless, from her virginity.

Artemis Ingalawa is scandalised, yet dare not intervene. Instead, she watches from the shadows, hoping against hope that Chegory has a plan. As it happens, he doesn’t. But he’s not worried. He’s sure he’ll solve all in time. He’s possessed by a buoyant over-confidence for which firewater must bear the blame.

But sooner or later this drinking spree must end. Sooner or later consequences must be faced. Let us hope it will be sooner rather than later — or who knows what horrors might be enacted tonight in this palace of corruption and crime?

The orgy of drinking would have continued all night if Binchinminfin’s enjoyment had not been halted by the natural limits of the flesh. The demon ceased to feel better and began to feel worse. So drank all the more in the hope of encouraging a more favourable trend. Then vomited, upchucking half-digested food to the rotting carpet of chowder and kedgeree.

The guards — at this stage there were several of them near at hand — watched with the technical detachment of vastly experienced experts as Binchinminfin grovelled on his hands and knees in the grotesque carpet of sludge. Vomiting repeatedly.

‘It’s a side effect, isn’t it?’ he said at last.

‘Yes,’ admitted Chegory. ‘One of the worse.’

For a while the demon said nothing. It was too sick to say anything. Then it said:

‘Why?’

‘Why what?’ said Chegory.

‘The side effects,’ said Binchinminfin. ‘Why me and not you? Why haven’t you thrown up?’

‘Because he’s an Ebby,’ said one of the guards, with contempt. ‘A stinking Ebby. We know his game! He’s been feeding you firewater to try to get you incapably drunk.’

‘You’re just jealous,’ said Chegory, with drunken racial pride. ‘You know you can’t match us Ebrell Islanders. We can outdrink outfight and-’

Well, I’m sure we all know what boast logically belongs to this sequence. Furthermore, you can be sure Chegory made it. Which increased the disapproval of the onlooking Ingalawa. She was committing every moment of this to memory. Sooner or later, Chegory would answer for his indiscretions!

‘Why would you want to get me drunk?’ said Binchinminfin, failing to realise that he was drunk already. ‘What good would it have done you?’

‘I would have cut your throat,’ said Chegory, shaking himself free of Olivia’s clutches as he lurched to his feet. ‘I would have raped your spleen with a gutting knife. I would have tom out your liver. I would have ripped out your lungs. Like this!’

So saying, Chegory staggered toward the demon. Then toppled and fell. Then got to his feet again. Binchinminfin obviously had to do something. But what? The logical, sensible thing was to incinerate young Chegory Guy. Or turn him into a toad. But, since the demon was drunk, he did something rash instead, and deserted the body of Varazchavardan for that of the Ebrell Islander, that splendid redskinned body which could outfight, outdrink and out-the-other every thing else in sight.

Yarazchavardan's deserted corpus slumped insensibly into the carpet of food.

‘He’s killed him?’ said one of the guards, meaning that Chegory had*lain B mrhinminfm.

Instantly several soldiers rushed forward, intending to slaughter Chegory Guy on the spot. Olivia screamed. But the guards never reached their target. Instead, they were spun round and smashed into the walls. They collapsed insensibly.

A guard on the mezzanine levelled a crossbow at Chegory and pulled the trigger. The crossbow bolt sped toward Chegory'$ heart. It never got there. It burst into flames in mid-air and disintegrated an instant later.

Tins is me!’ roared Odolo’s accents, issuing most strangely from the throat of young Chegory Guy. ‘Me, me, Bincbinminfin!’

IBs guards began to get the message.

Chegory, to his startlement, felt his throat worked, heard the words which issued forth, but found he had no control over his body whatsoever. It was being worked without reference to his own thoughts. So this was what it meant to be demonically possessed! It was, more than anything, like one of those terrible dreams in which your limbs refuse to obey you.

His first question was:

Olivia! Where is Olivia?

But he could not tell, for the demon had focused his eyes on a crock of firewater, which it was emptying into the drinking skull Chegory had been using.

Olivia! Olivia! Olivia!

Thus Chegory.

The much more interesting question, which never occurred to him at the time, was why Binchinminfin’s latest act of possession had not resulted in unconsciousness for both demon and new host. When Binchinminfin had leapt from the conjuror Odolo to the wonderworker Varazchavardan, the newly possessed flesh had been insensible for some time, whereas the demon had taken over Chegory without any such trouble.

The answer to this conundrum, of course, lies in the firewater both parties had been so liberally consuming. Alcohol softens the psychic shock usually suffered by an entity intelligent as it leaps from one body to another.

Long thereafter did Binchinminfin sit drinking. But all flesh has limits, and even Chegory Guy’s body could at last take no more. Liquor overpowered it, and the intelligence of demon and Ebrell Islander alike spiralled down into unconsciousness. The body lay there with its twin consciousness inert.

The guards kept vigil over their demonic master as the night crept on. Elsewhere, on the island of Jod, Chegory’s erstwhile companions-in-adventure sat round a watchfire, roasting vampire rats then eating the same. Meanwhile, the steady flux of dikle and shlug poured forth from the wealth fountains as if it would continue to outpour for all eternity.

‘He’s not coming back,’ said Pokrov at last, stating the obvious.

‘No,’ said Uckermark. ‘He’s not.’

‘So — so what do we tell the Hermit Crab?’ said Pokrov. ‘That’s for Zozimus to worry about, not us,’ said Uckermark. ‘He’s the one who had the job to do.’

The job in question was, as you will remember, to ask the demon Binchinminfin if it would be so kind as to provide the Hermit Crab with a human form. But Zozimus had already worked out what he would say to the Crab.

‘In the morning,’ said Zozimus, ‘I’ll tell the Crab the demon told him to go and get jumped on. Then maybe we’ll see some action!’

Dawn came to Injiltaprajura, but the sun bells failed to ring to mark the start of istarlat. Dawn brought light to supplement the tapers burning in the Star Chamber of the pink palace atop Pokra Ridge. A ghastly sight that light revealed.

Already fat flies were bumbling over the carpet of rotten chowder and kedgeree which covered much of the floor. Part of that carpet had disintegrated into a white writhing of maggots. In among this vomit-splattered slather of rotting food there lay a good half-dozen empty crocks (which had once held firewater) and the chamberpot which the demon Binchinminfin had chosen first as crown and later as drinking goblet.

Round the room various humans stood, sat or lay in postures of sleep, exhaustion or despair. There was Artemis Ingalawa comforting an exhausted and tearful Olivia. There was the Empress Justina, her white ape Vazzy in her arms. Besides these, there were half a dozen anonymous bedraggled females — serving wenches and such — and some waiters. And the lean and leucodermic Aquitaine Varazchavardan, surveying all he saw with manifest contempt. The pink-eyed Master of Law watched a young soldier who had the wishstone in his care. The man appeared to be wishing on it. The wonderworker could guess what the warrior desired.